Commissioner Murman mentioned and quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on wage theft:

POLITICS

Hillsborough commissioners reject proposed wage theft ordinance

TAMPA — Republican county commissioners today turned back an attempt to address wage theft based on a Miami-Dade County ordinance that supporters say has proven effective in recovering wages for workers who were cheated.

Led by commission Chair Sandy Murman, the board rebuffed efforts by Democrat Kevin Beckner to set a June 3 public hearing on a wage theft ordinance based on the Miami-Dade model. Bruce Nissen, author of a Florida International University study on wage theft in the state, told commissioners at an earlier meeting in March that the Miami-Dade model saves time and money because it encourages conciliation to settle disputes between employers and workers. If conciliation fails and the employer is found guility of illegally withholding wages at a formal hearing, than the employer has to pay “liquidated damages” equal to twice the wages owed the employee.

But Murman asked the county attorney’s office to look at how Palm Beach County handles wage theft by giving money to private attorneys and seek reimbursement through the court system.

Murman said she appreciated Beckner’s efforts to look at a local remedy for workers who are forced to work “off the clock” or are cheated out of earned wages when a business closes or the worker is dismissed. Without a local ordinance, the only agency that investigates wage theft is the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. The Labor Department has just 72 inspectors to cover the state of Florida.

But Murman said rather than possibly hiring one new county employee in the county Consumer Protection department at a salary of $45,000 to work on wage theft, she would rather give supplemental funding to Bay Area Legal Service to work wage theft cases through the courts.

“I don’t want to be in the position of growing government,” Murman said, referring to hiring the $45,000-a-year employee.

Beckner, who introduced the idea of a wage theft ordinance in March, said the county staff had already looked at other ordinances in the state and found the Miami-Dade model the most efficient in recovering wages for victims. Since the larger South Florida county passed its ordinance in February 2010, more than $4 million in lost wages have been recovered, according to a study by Florida International University.

Speakers that Beckner brought to address the commission, said the Palm Beach model had been shown to be the weakest of all Florida models and is the system favored by the Florida Retail Federation, which has opposed any type of wage theft legislation around the state.

But the other four Republican commissioners fell in behind Murman, saying they opposed “growing government,” though they thought the goal is a noble one. The board finally voted 7-0 to hold a public meeting June 17 at which the staff would report on the Palm Beach ordinance.